How to be kind to yourself (without going to a day spa)
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“I have to be hard on myself,” Sarah told me in a recent telehealth psychology session. “I would never reach my potential if I was kind and let myself off the hook.”
I could empathise with this fear of self-compassion from clients such as Sarah (not her real name). From a young age, we are taught to be kind to others, but self-kindness is never mentioned.
Instead, we are taught success hinges on self-sacrifice. And we need a healthy inner critic to bully us forward into becoming increasingly better versions of ourselves.
But research shows there doesn’t have to be a trade-off between self-compassion and success.
Self-compassion can help you reach your potential, while supporting you to face the inevitable stumbles and setbacks along the way.
What is self-compassion?
Self-compassion has three key ingredients.
1. Self-kindness
This involves treating yourself with the same kindness you would extend towards a good friend – via your thoughts, feelings and actions – especially during life’s difficult moments.
For instance, if you find yourself fixating on a minor mistake you made at work, self-kindness might involve taking a ten-minute walk to shift focus, and reminding yourself it is OK to make mistakes sometimes, before moving on with your day.
2. Mindfulness
In this context, mindfulness involves being aware of your own experience of stress or suffering, rather than repressing or avoiding your feelings, or over-identifying with them.
Basically, you must see your stress with a clear (mindful) perspective before you can respond with kindness. If we avoid or are consumed by our suffering, we lose perspective.
3. Common humanity
Common humanity involves recognising our own experience of suffering as something that unites us as being human.
For instance, a sleep-deprived parent waking up (for the fourth time) to feed their newborn might choose to think about all the other parents around the world doing exactly the same thing – as opposed to feeling isolated and alone.
It’s not about day spas, or booking a manicure
When Sarah voiced her fear that self-compassion would prevent her success, I explained self-compassion is distinct from self-indulgence.
“So is self-compassion just about booking in more mani/pedis?” Sarah asked.
Not really, I explained. A one-off trip to a day spa is unlikely to transform your mental health.
Instead, self-compassion is a flexible psychological resilience factor that shapes our thoughts, feelings and actions.
It’s associated with a suite of benefits to our wellbeing, relationships and health.
baranq/Shutterstock
What does the science say?
Over the past 20 years, we’ve learned self-compassionate people enjoy a wide range of benefits. They tend to be happier and have fewer psychological symptoms of distress.
Those high on self-compassion persevere following a failure. They say they are more motivated to overcome a personal weakness than those low on self-compassion, who are more likely to give up.
So rather than feeling trapped by your inadequacies, self-compassion encourages a growth mindset, helping you reach your potential.
However, self-compassion is not a panacea. It will not change your life circumstances or somehow make life “easy”. It is based on the premise that life is hard, and provides practical tools to cope.
It’s a factor in healthy ageing
I research menopause and healthy ageing and am especially interested in the value of self-compassion through menopause and in the second half of life.
Because self-compassion becomes important during life’s challenges, it can help people navigate physical symptoms (for instance, menopausal hot flushes), life transitions such as divorce, and promote healthy ageing.
I’ve also teamed up with researchers at Autism Spectrum Australia to explore self-compassion in autistic adults.
We found autistic adults report significantly lower levels of self-compassion than neurotypical adults. So we developed an online self-compassion training program for this at-risk population.
Three tips for self-compassion
You can learn self-compassion with these three exercises.
1. What would you say to a friend?
Think back to the last time you made a mistake. What did you say to yourself?
If you notice you’re treating yourself more like an enemy than a friend, don’t beat yourself up about it. Instead, try to think about what you might tell a friend, and direct that same friendly language towards yourself.
2. Harness the power of touch
Soothing human touch activates the parasympathetic “relaxation” branch of our nervous system and counteracts the fight or flight response.
Specifically, self-soothing touch (for instance, by placing both hands on your heart, stroking your forearm or giving yourself a hug) reduces cortisol responses to psychosocial stress.
http://krakenimages.com/Shutterstock
3. What do I need right now?
Sometimes, it can be hard to figure out exactly what self-compassion looks like in a given moment. The question “what do I need right now” helps clarify your true needs.
For example, when I was 37 weeks pregnant, I woke up bolt awake one morning at 3am.
Rather than beating myself up about it, or fretting about not getting enough sleep, I gently placed my hands on my heart and took a few deep breaths. By asking myself “what do I need right now?” it became clear that listening to a gentle podcast/meditation fitted the bill (even though I wanted to addictively scroll my phone).
Lydia Brown, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Best Foods For Collagen Production
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Dr. Andrea Suarez gives us the low-down on collagen synthesis and maintenance. Collagen is the most abundant protein in our body, and it can be fairly described as “the stuff that holds us together”. It’s particularly important for joints and bones too, though many people’s focus on it is for the skin. Whatever your priorities, collagen levels are something it pays to be mindful of, as they usually drop quite sharply after a certain age. What certain age? Well, that depends a lot on you, and your diet and lifestyle. But it can start to decline from the age of 30 with often noticeable drop-offs in one’s mid-40s and again in one’s mid-60s.
Showing us what we’re made of
There’s a lot more to having good collagen levels than just how much collagen we consume (which for vegetarians/vegans, will be “none”, unless using the “except if for medical reasons” exemption, which is probably a little tenuous in the case of collagen but nevertheless it’s a possibility; this exemption is usually one that people use for, say, a nasal spray vaccine that contains gelatine, or a medicinal tablet that contains lactose, etc).
Rather, having good collagen levels is also a matter of what we eat that allows us to synthesize our own collagen (which includes: its ingredients, and various “helper” nutrients), as well as what dietary adjustments we make to avoid our extant collagen getting broken down, degraded, and generally lost.
Here’s what Dr. Suarez recommends:
Protein-rich foods (but watch out)
- Protein is essential for collagen production.
- Sources: fish, soy, lean meats (but not red meats, which—counterintuitively—degrade collagen), eggs, lentils.
- Egg whites are high in lysine, vital for collagen synthesis.
- Bone broth is a natural source of collagen.
Omega-3 fatty acids
- Omega-3s are anti-inflammatory and protect skin collagen.
- Sources: walnuts, chia seeds, flax seeds, fatty fish (e.g. mackerel, sardines).
Leafy greens
- Leafy dark green vegetables (e.g. kale, spinach) are rich in vitamins C and B9.
- Vitamin C is crucial for collagen synthesis and acts as an antioxidant.
- Vitamin B9 supports skin cell division and DNA repair.
Red fruits & vegetables
- Red fruits/vegetables (e.g. tomatoes, red bell peppers) contain lycopene, an antioxidant that protects collagen from UV damage (so, that aspect is mostly relevant for skin, but antioxidants are good things to have in all of the body in any case).
Orange-colored vegetables
- Carrots and sweet potatoes are rich in vitamin A, which helps in collagen repair and synthesis.
- Vitamin A is best from food, not supplements, to avoid potential toxicity.
Fruits rich in vitamin C
- Citrus fruits, kiwi, and berries are loaded with vitamin C and antioxidants, essential for collagen synthesis and skin health.
Soy
- Soy products (e.g. tofu, soybeans) contain isoflavones, which reduce inflammation and inhibit enzymes that degrade collagen.
- Soy is associated with lower risks of chronic diseases.
Garlic
- Garlic contains sulfur, taurine, and lipoic acid, important for collagen production and repair.
What to avoid:
- Reduce foods high in advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which damage collagen and promote inflammation.
- AGEs are found in fried, roasted, or grilled fatty proteinous foods (e.g. meat, including synthetic meat, and yes, including grass-fed nicely marketed meat—although processed meat such as bacon and sausages are even worse than steaks etc).
- Switch to cooking methods like boiling or steaming to reduce AGE levels.
- Processed foods, sugary pastries, and red meats contribute to collagen degradation.
General diet tips:
- Incorporate more plant-based, antioxidant-rich foods.
- Opt for slow cooking to reduce AGEs.
- Since sustainability is key, choose foods you enjoy for a collagen-boosting diet that you won’t seem like a chore a month later.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of ← our main feature research review about collagen
Take care!
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Little Treatments, Big Effects – by Dr. Jessica Schleider
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The author, a clinical psychologist, discusses how mental healthcare has come a very long way, yet still has a long way to go. While advocating for top-down reforms, she does have a stopgap solution:
Find ways to significantly improve people’s mental health in a single-session intervention.
This seems like a tall order, but her method is based on good science, and also, most people will agree from experience that big changes can happen to someone in the space of moments, at pivotal turning points in life—they just have to be the right moments.
Dr. Schleider recommends that therapists train in (and then offer) this method, but she does also give comprehensive advice for self-therapy of this kind too.
These self-therapy directions, ways to induce those life-pivoting moments for the better, are perhaps the greatest value that the book gives us.
Bottom line: if you’d like a lot of the benefits of therapy without getting therapy, this book can definitely point you in the right direction, in a manner that won’t be a drain on your time or your wallet.
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Dates vs Prunes – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing dates to prunes, we picked the prunes.
Why?
First let’s note: we’re listing the second fruit here as “prunes” rather than “plums”, since prunes are dehydrated plums, and it makes more sense to compare the dried fruit to dates which are invariably dried too. Otherwise, the water weight of plums would unfairly throw out the nutrient proportions per 100g (indeed, upon looking up numbers, dates would overwhelmingly beat plums easily in the category of pretty much every nutrient).
So let’s look at the fairer comparison:
In terms of macros, dates have a little more protein, carbohydrate, and fiber. This is because while both are dried, prunes are usually sold with more water remaining than dates; indeed, per 100g prunes still have 30g water weight to dates’ 20g water weight. This makes everything close, but we are going to call this category a nominal win for dates. Mind you, hydration is still good, but please do not rely on dried fruit for your hydration!
When it comes to vitamins, dates have more of vitamins B5 and B9, while prunes have more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, C, E, K, and choline. A clear win for prunes here.
In the category of minerals, it’s a similar story: dates have more iron, magnesium, and selenium, while prunes have more calcium, copper, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. Another win for prunes.
In short, enjoy either or both, but prunes win on overall nutritional density!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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This Week In Brain News
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While reading this week’s health news, we’ve singled out three brain-related articles to feature here:
Bad breath now, bad brain later?
Researchers found links between oral microbiome populations, and changes in brain function with aging. The short version is indeed “bad breath now = bad brain later”, but more specifically:
- People who had large numbers of the bacteria groups Neisseria and Haemophilus had better memory, attention and ability to do complex tasks
- People who had higher levels of Porphyromonas had more memory problems later
- People with a lot of Prevotella tended to predict poorer brain health and was more common in people who carry the Alzheimer’s Disease risk gene, APOE4.
If you’ve never heard of half of those, don’t worry: mostly your oral microbiome can take care of itself, provide you consistently do the things that create a “good” oral microbiome. So, see our “related” link below:
Read in full: Mouth bacteria may hold insight into your future brain function
Related: Improve Your Oral Microbiome
Weeding out a major cause of cognitive decline
Cannabis may be great for relaxation, but regular use is not great for mental sharpness, and recent use (even if not regular, and even if currently sober) shows a similar dip in cognitive abilities, especially working memory. In other words, cannabis use for relaxation should be at most an occasional thing, rather than an everyday thing.
While the results of the study are probably not shocking, something that we found interesting was their classification system:
❝Heavy users are considered young adults who’ve used cannabis more than 1000 times over their lifetime. Whereas, using 10 to 999 times was considered a moderate user, and fewer than 10 times was considered a non-user.❞
Which—while being descriptive rather than prescriptive in nature—suggests that, to be on the healthy end of the bell curve, an occasional cannabis-user might want to consider “if you have 999 uses before you hit the “heavy user” category, project those 999 uses against your life expectancy, and moderate your use accordingly”. In other words, a person just now starting use, who expects to live another 40 years, would calculate: 999/40 = 24.9 uses per year, so call it 2 per month. A person who only expects to live another 20 years, would do the same math and arrive at 4 per month.
Disclaimer: the above is intended as an interesting reframe, and a way of looking at long-term cannabis use while being mindful of the risks. It is not intended as advice. This health-conscious writer personally has no intention of using at all, unless perhaps in some bad future scenario in which I have bad chronic pain, I might consider that pain relief effects may be worth the downsides. Or I might not; I hope not to be in the situation to find out!
Read in full: Largest study ever done on cannabis and brain function finds impact on working memory
Related: Cannabis Myths vs Reality
Mind-reading technology improves again
We’ve come quite a way from simple 1/0 reads, and basic cursor control! Now, researchers have created a brain decode that can translate a person’s thoughts into continuous text, without requiring the person to focus on words—in other words, it verbalizes the ideas directly. Most recently, the latest upgrade means that while previously, the device had to be trained on an individual brain for many hours, now the training/calibration process takes only an hour:
Read in full: Improved brain decoder holds promise for communication in people with aphasia
Related: Are Brain Chips Safe?
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How Gluconolactone Restores Immune Regulation In Lupus
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Let’s be clear up front: this will not cure lupus.
However, it will interrupt the pathology of lupus in such a way as to, as the title says, restore immune regulation—so that your body stops attacking itself, or at the very least, attacks itself significantly less.
What is gluconolactone anyway?
Gluconolactone (also called glucono-δ-lactone) an oxidized derivative of glucose, when glucose is exposed to oxygen and a certain enzyme (glucose oxidase). It’s used in various food-related fermentation processes, and also helps such foods to have a tangy flavor.
It’s also known as E575, showing that E-numbers need not always be scary 🙂
How does it work?
First, a recap on how lupus works: lupus is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks its own tissues, causing inflammation and organ damage (to oversimplify it in very few words).
Next, how lupus is currently treated: mostly with immunosuppressant drugs, which reduce symptoms but have significant side effects, not least of all the fact that your immune system will be suppressed, leaving you vulnerable to infections, cancer, aging, and the like. So, there’s really a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” aspect here (because untreated lupus will run your immune system into the ground with its chronic inflammation, which will also leave you vulnerable to the aforementioned things).
See also: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Now, how gluconolactone works: it increases the number of regulatory T-cells (also called “Tregs” by scientists who don’t want to have to say/write “regulatory T-cells” many times per day), which are the ones that tell the rest of your immune system what not to attack. It also inhibits pro-inflammatory T-helper-cells that are otherwise involved in autoimmune dysfunction.
Where is the science for this?
It’s a shiny new paper that covers three angles:
- In lupus-suffering mouse in vivo studies, it improved Treg function and reduced inflammatory skin rashes
- In human cell culture in vitro studies (with cell cultures from human lupus patients), it bolstered Treg count and improved immune regulation
- In human patient in vivo studies, a gluconolactone cream controlled skin inflammation and improved the clinical and histologic appearance of the skin lesions within 2 weeks
❝These results suggest that gluconolactone could be a targeted treatment option with fewer side effects for autoimmune diseases such as lupus.
Gluconolactone acts like a ‘power food’ for regulatory T cells—a real win-win situation for immune regulation❞
~ Dr. Antonios Kolios
You can find the paper itself here:
Where can I get gluconolactone?
At the moment, this is still in the clinical trials phase, so it’s not something you can get a prescription for yet, alas.
But definitely keep an eye out for it!
We would hypothesize that eating foods fermented with E575 (it’s sometimes used in feta cheese, hence today’s featured image, and it’s also often used as a pickling agent) may well help, but that’s just our hypothesis as it isn’t what was tested in the above studies.
Want to learn more?
In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about lupus, we recommend this very comprehensive book:
*The “et al.” are: Jemima Albayda, MD; Divya Angra, MD; Alan N. Baer, MD; Sasha Bernatsky, MD, PhD; George Bertsias, MD, PhD; Ashira D. Blazer, MD; Ian Bruce, MD; Jill Buyon, MD; Yashaar Chaichian, MD; Maria Chou, MD; Sharon Christie, Esq; Angelique N. Collamer, MD; Ashté Collins, MD; Caitlin O. Cruz, MD; Mark M. Cruz, MD; Dana DiRenzo, MD; Jess D. Edison, MD; Titilola Falasinnu, PhD; Andrea Fava, MD; Cheri Frey, MD; Neda F. Gould, PhD; Nishant Gupta, MD; Sarthak Gupta, MD; Sarfaraz Hasni, MD; David Hunt, MD; Mariana J. Kaplan, MD; Alfred Kim, MD; Deborah Lyu Kim, DO; Rukmini Konatalapalli, MD; Fotios Koumpouras, MD; Vasileios C. Kyttaris, MD; Jerik Leung, MPH; Hector A. Medina, MD; Timothy Niewold, MD; Julie Nusbaum, MD; Ginette Okoye, MD; Sarah L. Patterson, MD; Ziv Paz, MD; Darryn Potosky, MD; Rachel C. Robbins, MD; Neha S. Shah, MD; Matthew A. Sherman, MD; Yevgeniy Sheyn, MD; Julia F. Simard, ScD; Jonathan Solomon, MD; Rodger Stitt, MD; George Stojan, MD; Sangeeta Sule, MD; Barbara Taylor, CPPM, CRHC; George Tsokos, MD; Ian Ward, MD; Emma Weeding, MD; Arthur Weinstein, MD; Sean A. Whelton, MD
The reason we mention this is to render it clear that this isn’t one man’s opinions (as happens with many books about certain topics), but rather, a panel of that many doctors all agreeing that this is correct and good, evidence-based, up-to-date (as of the publication of this latest revised edition) information.
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The Food Additive You Do Want
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Q: When Is A Fiber Not A Fiber?
A: when it’s a resistant starch. What’s it resistant to? Digestion. So, it functions as though a fiber, and by some systems, may get classified as such.
It’s a little like how sucralose is technically a sugar, but the body processes it like a fiber (but beware, because the sweetness of this disaccharide alone can trigger an insulin response anyway—dose dependent)
There may be other problems too:
But today’s not about sucralose, it’s about…
Guar gum’s surprising dietary role
You may have noticed “guar gum” on the list of ingredients of all kinds of things from baked goods to dairy products to condiments to confectionary and more.
It’s also used in cosmetics and explosives, but let’s not focus on that.
It’s used in food products as…
- a bulking agent
- a thickener
- a stabilizer
Our attention was caught by a new study, that found:
Resistant starch intake facilitates weight loss in humans by reshaping the gut microbiota
Often people think of “fiber helps weight loss” as “well yes, if you are bulking out your food with sawdust, you will eat less”, but it’s not that.
There’s an actual physiological process going on here!
We can’t digest it, but our gut microbiota can and will ferment it. See also:
Fiber against pounds: Resistant starch found to support weight loss
Beyond weight loss
Not everyone wants to lose weight, and even where weight loss is a goal, it’s usually not the only goal. As it turns out, adding guar gum into our diet does more things too:
Resistant starch supplement found to reduce liver triglycerides in people with fatty liver disease
(specifically, this was about NAFLD, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease)
Digging a little, it seems the benefits don’t stop there either:
Diet high in guar gum fiber limits inflammation and delays multiple sclerosis symptoms
(this one was a rodent study, but still, it’s promising and it’s consistent with what one would expect based on what else we know about its function in diet)
Should we just eat foods with guar gum in as an additive?
That depends on what they are, but watch out for the other additives if you do!
You can just buy guar gum by itself, by the way (here’s an example product on Amazon).
It’s doubtlessly no fun to take as a supplement (we haven’t tried this one), but it can be baked into bread, if baking’s your thing, or just used as a thickener in recipes where ordinarily you might use cornstarch or something else.
Can I get similar benefits from other foods?
The relevant quality is also present in resistant starches in general, so you might want to check out these foods, for example:
9 Foods That Are High in Resistant Starch
You can also check out ways to increase your fiber intake in general:
Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
Enjoy!
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